Lunacy in many lands / by G.A. Tucker.

  • Tucker, George A.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lunacy in many lands / by G.A. Tucker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    1616/1626 (page 1560)
    duty to look into its management with as searching a gaze as he could command. That Asylum, so far as he could judge, was conducted with eminent success, and Dr. Tucker had been eminently successful in his treatment of individual cases. (Applause.) Well, Dr. Tucker had been away from them for about three and a half years. He (Sir Henry) was a member of the Government which gave him leave of absence, but at the time the doctor left was absent from the Colony. However, the gentleman who performed his (Sir Henry's) duties during his absence—Sir John Robertson—had attached his name to the credentials which Dr. Tucker took with him. (Applause.) Their guest had gone at his own expense, and had completely ransacked the two continents—Europe and America. (Applause.) The word ransacked might be a rough one, but it best expressed his meaning. The doctor had ransacked all those repositories where information on this subject could be obtained. He had not spared any labour, and the information which he had collected, when massed and generalized in his report, must be of immense use both to this Colony and other countries—(applause)—and he had done this work well, inasmuch as he had spared no pains in the doing of it. It was difficult for them to understand the large amount of labour and the large store of discretion a man must have who travelled a continent like America to get information on a subject like this, where such difficulties were opposed to those who sought to obtain it. Dr. Tucker had performed his duties well, and had elicited nearly all that was valuable in relation to Asylums, both in Europe and America, from the complex and difficidt circumstances under which he had to study their economy. A work of such a kind was no light one, and was in the highest degree creditable to him, while it could not but prove beneficial to the country. Dr. Tucker had proved himself fully entitled to any compliment they could bestow upon him, even if much more significant and emphatic than the compliment of that luncheon. (Applause.) In his (Sir Henry's) intercourse with Dr. Tucker—and he thought it began before the doctor had charge of his private Asylum, ho thought it began when the doctor was a private citizen—he had formed the opinion that he was by education, natural aptitude, and his natural bent for inquiry on this particular subject admirably adapted for treating lunatic patients. He (Sir Henry) had seen him control the actions of these patients as if they were the wax and he the modeller. He had seen him submitting to the vagaries of his patients' strained intellect, and adapting himself to the fearful phases of that particular disease in a surprising way. He thought that he had, while in charge of the Asylum which bore his name, done pre-eminent service to the country. (Applause.) He proposed the health of Dr. Tucker. The toast was received with cheers.